Anyone Would Drown
by sentbyfools
Summary: The vampires' war with the lycans and the humans is going well. During a battle in the ruins of Central Park, Eve is bitten by one of the super lycans. The bite starts to change her, and it's not a change she is sure anyone will be able to accept even David, her only friend. She is turning into the enemy, a lycan, and in 3 days time she'll be past the point of no return.


******Title: **Anyone Would Drown**  
****Author: **sentbyfools**  
****Artist: **bluefire986 (art found at bluefire986 on livejournal)**  
****Pairing: **David/Eve**  
****Rating: **R**  
****Summary: **The vampires' war with the lycans and the humans is going well. They're winning; cities all over the world are falling to them, and New York looks to be no different.

During a battle in the ruins of Central Park, Eve, a hybrid child of a half-vampire, half-lycan and a vampire, is bitten by one of the lycans made super large, strong, and fast by her hybrid biology. The bite starts to change her, and it is not a change she is sure anyone will be able to accept even David, the leader of her coven and her only friend.

She is turning into the enemy, a lycan, and in three days time she will be past the point of no return.

**A/N: **Thank you so much to **legosaurusrex** for beta'ing this for me and making it not suck and to my artist **bluefire986** for creating such gorgeous artwork in such a short amount of time. I love this fic so much, it is unhealthy. But yeah, David/Eve is OTP and there will probably be a sequel at some point.

* * *

**Day 01;**

The battlefield is littered with corpses. There are humans, vampires, and lycans alike piled upon each other. The lycan counts are the highest. There aren't enough humans left to kill, not yet, although the vampire high council has plans to fix that. _Human farms_. The idea makes Eve cringe, but what's needed is needed. And they need to feed.

It smells like death, and it hangs in the air like the manmade fog that covers the remnants of Central Park. Amongst the fallen trees and broken stone masonry, the fog lingers, sneaking in between corpses. It might've been beautiful once, this park. However, Eve's known nothing of beauty her whole life, so she can't imagine what it could be like, can only see what's right before her eyes: darkness and destruction.

Eve slogs her way through the broken pieces of bloody remains and sniffs at the air as she does so, searching. David's to the east. Although through the manmade fog thrown down by the human army, she can barely see past her face. It's dangerous because although the battle has been won, there are stragglers. The human survivors are known for giving up, but the lycans are not. They'll fight to death, usually their own.

Eve's picking her way through a pile of vampires too torn apart to save when she senses it. It's not hard to notice; the ground shakes underneath her, bodies and dust moving with the rhythm of the lycan's steps. Eve is able to easily duck the bodies it tosses in her direction. She sidesteps and pulls at the knives attached to her waist. She doesn't use guns unlike her mother. She'd rather fight with sharper tools, and her preference is unusual, but so is everything about her.

The overlarge lycan covered in blood and guts growls its displeasure at her, shaking the very air with the sound. Eve growls right back at it. Her face shifts from its human mask, her fangs elongating and her skin stretching to compensate. She shifts her stance and pulls the knives over her head, waiting.

She doesn't have to wait long. The lycan charges at her, and she jumps off the ground flipping herself over the lycan. The speed with which she carries herself over its head leaves it with no time to recover before she's stabbing into the hard skin of its jugular. The skin is tough, so she only gets in a few sharp blows before it reaches backwards and throws her off it.

It roars again, grabbing her back up into its arms. It crushes her ribs beneath its claws and she gasps out her pain, dropping one of her knives in surprise. The other she holds onto tightly, and as it lowers its maw to bite her, she stabs at its open mouth.

It bites down on her forearm and the knife, mashing it between its teeth. She's bleeding for the first time since the battle began. She leaves the knife in its mouth as she jumps out of its now slack hands. Her ribs hurt, the broken ones cutting into her insides, but she can't think of that right now. The lycan is still breathing, and she won't rest until it's dead.

She hisses at it. She rolls as it swings it's arm at her, picking up her fallen knife as she goes. Her rolls sends her into a corpse, knocking her over. The super lycan uses it to its advantage. It punches into her gut, dripping blood from its cut mouth onto her. There's dust in her eyes from her fall and it teams up with the fog and the pain to make everything hazy. She can't move for a moment, but finally she's able to get a grip on herself and jump up and to the side, moving over the corpse blocking her way.

The lycan growls at her again, and she glances at it briefly before sweeping around it to slice a long bloody line along it's whole torso. When she gets to its back she stabs repeatedly. Her knife cuts a hole in its spine, and finally the beast falls to its knees.

When it does, she jumps back on it backs and stabs into the top of its head, a killing blow. The lycan lets out one last pained whimper and quiets.

Eve jumps down, and suddenly she can't stand. Her legs wobble beneath her and she falls against her fallen enemy. The lycan's skin is soft beneath her, almost like her bed in the coven's headquarters.

Her eyes close against her will. She struggles to open them again, and when she's finally able to, she can just make out another figure in the distance.

_Lycan._

She closes her eyes again, and waits for death.

* * *

David's the one who finds her. He's chasing after a wounded lycan when he smells her blood. The scent is strong, too strong for his liking.

He runs faster, lashing his whip in front of him. It catches the lycan in the back, and leaves a bloody swath in its skin. It turns its head and growls at him, but otherwise it doesn't stop running. David jumps over corpses in his way, kicking up blood and dirt as he does so. The lycan starts throwing bodies behind him to slow David down, but David's faster than the wounded beast. He dodges them easily.

The fog makes everything harder to see, but his hearing and sense of smell are still strong enough that he can hear laboured breathing and scent out Eve's location through her blood. He doesn't like leaving the lycan alive, but Eve's injured and her safety is more important than one injured lycan.

The lycan bypasses Eve's fallen form, moving off into the fog. David runs over to her. She's still awake, but barely. He wraps his whip around his waist and presses his hands to her skin. She flinches when his hands touch her, and then relaxes.

"Eve, don't worry. I'm taking you home," he says.

He thinks he hears her say, "Thank you," but it could just be his imagination.

He lifts her over his back, and carries her through the clearing fog back to the headquarters. He isn't stopped at all on the way by vampire or lycan or human, and it seems like everyone is giving him a wide berth. _Good_, he thinks. With Eve's safety in his hands, he prefers it that way.

It doesn't take long for him to reach their headquarters. He rushes past the vampires milling on guard on the upper level and takes Eve to her room. He places her gently on the bed, and although he doesn't want to leave her side he has to find the healer.

She isn't easy to find. With all the injured about, Maria has her work cut out for her. David's supposed to care for all his people equally, but the only thing on his mind is making sure Eve is okay, so when he finds her helping a wounded vampire ─ Erik─ he pulls her away without a second thought, escorting her to Eve's room.

He's silent until he reaches Eve's bedside, and when he sees Eve's distressed form struggling against the bed, he says, "She passed out on me. She was bitten pretty badly by a lycan, and with her unique biology ─"

He doesn't have to finish because Maria nods and says, "She probably just needs blood. Yours will do."

David bites into his wrist without a second thought. The blood drips on Eve's clean sheets, but she's already bleeding on to them already, so he supposes she won't mind much.

He places his wound to her mouth, but she pushes him away. He tries again, and again she has the same reaction. He looks to Maria, who's looking over Eve's wounded arm.

"She won't take the blood. Let her rest. She'll probably be fine in the morning. I have more serious cases to attend to, David," she says not unkindly before sweeping out of the room.

David doesn't know what to do with himself. Logically he knows he needs to go outside and rally his people, do a headcount, mourn the dead ─ but all he wants is stay by Eve's side.

He looks down at her quiet form. She's unmoving now except for the steady rise of her chest. It's odd, watching her breathe and for a moment, he wonders what it's like to feel the air in his lungs. To feel human.

_Lycan, Vampire, Immortal._ The thought pops into his mind unbidden and he looks to the cut on her arm. _Lycan._

He presses a hand to her head, a calming gesture, before exiting the room.

He meets Alexander in the hall outside the main room. Alexander is older than him, but he answers to David. Everyone does. Ever since Selene and Michael left for San Diego, David's led the coven. Although the main orders still come from the newly established vampire high council led by his father, the most senior vampire, they've looked to David for answers.

"How many dead?" David asks Alexander. It's no time to mince words and hand out pleasantries; Alexander usually doesn't appreciate them anyway.

"About 30. Is the hybrid awake to revive the able?"

The way Alexander says _hybrid_ makes David bristle. Most of the coven accepts as well as they do Selene and Michael: grudgingly. That doesn't mean their aversion to her doesn't bother David, and he knows it bothers Eve although she never mentions it.

"Eve's injured. She won't be awake for awhile yet. The dead shall have to stay dead for now," David says. He puts emphasis on Eve's name, making sure to get his point across.

Alexander doesn't roll his eyes ─ it's not something he would do ─ but David still sees the dismissal in his form. He can't deal with Alexander's insubordination now though.

"Are we still safe?"

Alexander nods, professional nature is back. "Of course."

"Let's go make sure we stay that way."

* * *

Eve remembers very little about returning to the headquarters except this: the feeling of being carried, safe in David's arms, the sound of a woman's voice saying, "she won't take the blood. Let her rest," and the soft press of a cool hand against her head.

Her dreams she remembers more clearly because all night she dreams of the same thing: torn throats, piles of flesh, and the full moon high in the night sky.

Dreams like that she can't forget.

* * *

**Day 02;**

Eve has never felt a hunger so strong before in her life.

Her stomach aches with the need, and for the first time, she craves meat. Not blood, _meat,_ and the thought of eating it doesn't make her sick to her stomach at all.

She hungers.

There's a stain on her bed from her bleeding arm but Eve barely notices. She crawls out of her bed and gets dressed with a precision learned from her mother. Clothing is a necessity, not something to worry about. Although she's certain other women of this coven would say differently. Vampires are vain creatures she's come to learn, and in that sense she's glad she doesn't have friends ─ except for David, of course. Like Eve, he doesn't care about keeping up the fashions. All he cares about is winning the war and protecting them, and Eve admires that in him, his devotion. It's beautiful.

Her stomach rumbles. Eve blanches. Her stomach has never rumbled before. The wound on her hand itches painfully, but she avoids scratching it. She has self-control.

She leaves her room, and heads towards David's. No one else would really care if she left. They don't trust her around them as it is, only tolerate her because David does. David would care if she left without saying anything to him though, and she's not in the mood for his worried voice. She's hungry, _starving_, and she needs the hunt.

"David," she calls out as she knocks on his door. After a minute with no response, she enters. It's rude but she doesn't have the patience to wait for him to answer. Her stomach aches more painfully than her cracked ribs did, and it feels even more paralyzing.

"Eve," he says, coming out of the bathroom. He's shirtless and Eve's glad that she doesn't have enough blood in her to blush. It's not the first time she's seen him shirtless, but ever since she was 22 it's made her heat all over from the sight. She ignores that part of her as she's gotten used to doing. Eve doesn't want to complicate their already complicated relationship by bringing her feelings into the mix. Romance is a mess; she learned that long ago by watching and reading the human romance novels and movies Lida would bring to her, not to mention the war caused by her parents.

David is staring at her now with a curious look in his eyes, so Eve explains, "I'm going on a hunt."

"We've only just cleared out the northern areas. You can't."

She gives him a look of disbelief and says, "I am."

She's not a child that needs protect anymore. She's certainly stronger than all the enemies out there; she's survived a fight against a super lycan with barely a scratch. She'll be perfectly safe out there alone.

David closes his eyes for a long moment, and then he opens them again and stares at her. "Give me a moment and I'll come with you."

"No," she says. She isn't sure why she says it. Normally she would be grateful to have him by her side, but now ─ she's terrified what he might say if he finds her feeding on flesh. It's not a vampire thing to do at all, and even after fifteen years, her unusual biology still shames her. Eve's nothing like her father, nothing like her mother.

She's a freak, and she doesn't want David to see it anymore than he has to.

"We have blood here," he tries to reason, "Enough to sate even the strongest hunger."

The humans in the underground levels ─ she shakes her head at the thought of feeding on the helpless creatures, and thinks, _not my hunger_. All she says aloud is, "I'm going hunting. This isn't an argument, David."

His face breaks out in a wide grin, and Eve stares at him, confused.

"Why are you smiling?" she asks. The expression is unnerving ─ and a little exciting. She'll never admit to the thrill she gets every time David smiles, especially when he smiles at her.

"You've always been so stubborn. You're still the same girl even after all this time," he explains.

He's still smiling at her, but Eve's too unsure of whether his words are a compliment or a criticism to smile back.

"I'm leaving now," she says, taking a step back away from him. Being in his presence is strange to her now, and he's _still_ smiling so it's time to take her leave. She's starving anyway, and she hopes he doesn't notice the way her stomach grumbles it's hunger.

"Alright. See you soon," David replies as she turns and exits his room.

* * *

David frowns when Eve leaves his room. Her arm was still bleeding, and she didn't even seem to notice. What was worse is that Eve had denied his company so vehemently, though he supposed that only bothered him more because he was the one needy of her company.

_Love_, he thinks, _is stupid._

The thought doesn't stop him from dressing in his hunting clothes, arming himself and following her out the door.

* * *

Eve walks down the hall and enters the large circular meeting chamber. The building they're living in was too destroyed to repair above ground, but in the basement beneath, they were able to expand into a livable underground mansion of sorts. The main room, this circular chamber, connects all the other rooms and is the place where most come to feed and plan.

Tonight, the hall is brightly lit, casting a blue-tinted glow over the whole room. At the center table sits a female vampire whose name Eve can't recall draining a human soldier. The drainer is connected to his forearm, and the blood flows out into it slowly. The man is pale and sweating, but he doesn't look scared. Some people enjoy the feeling of blood loss, so the almost dopey look on his face isn't surprising.

Eve can hear the drip of the falling droplets, and she feels pity for the man any way. The soldiers kill, but they do it to protect the ones they love. Eve can understand that ─ she'd do anything for her family.

Although the blood smells good, it's the sight of the man's bloody forearm that really makes Eve crave. She stares at it, stopping in her approach towards the exit, and she imagines tearing into him with her teeth.

The thought sickens her, but much less than it should.

The vampire starts to glare at Eve, and that look and Eve's hunger combine to make her feet move forward and towards the exit. It's easy to climb the stairs leading out, but the image of the torn man still remains.

Her arm aches, and Eve finally gives the bleeding wound a good look. The cut is deep, but it still should've healed already. It's probably because she hasn't fed in awhile, although the colour is something to ponder. It's blue around the edges, and it's yet another thing Eve's unsurprised by. Nothing about her biology surprises her anymore; she just chalks it up to another of her strange reactions and moves on.

She moves on in fact down the street leading south. Her walk turns into a sprint and then a full run. She races down the night-covered streets, searching. It's harder to find human soldiers, or let any humans, here these days. The coven's done a good job clearing them out and collecting them at the different breeding and draining locations, and who they haven't taken the lycans have.

Eve _could_ feed on a lycan. She senses plenty of them around, skulking in the shadows of the un-cleared streets. The thought repulses her though, whereas yesterday it wouldn't have bothered her at all. It's a strange feeling, the almost breakneck reaction to the idea. She wishes momentarily that her father were here to tell her it's something normal. Even he isn't quite like her though so the likelihood of him being able to explain it is low.

Besides, she wouldn't want him to see what she's about to do.

She sniffs the air. There's a human close by. She narrows her eyes and truly looks around for the first time since coming outside. Around her are bombed out buildings, mostly rubble on their foundations. There's one building, probably a former hotel, though that's mostly standing on the east corner of the street. She's certain that's where she'll find the human.

She's right in her assessment; she finds him standing just in the doorway of the old hotel. He's waiting for her, but he doesn't put up much of a fight when she attacks him although wishes he did. It's not that she feels particularly guilty because he isn't defenseless. The kill just feels better when she has to fight for it. He whispers a prayer when she overcomes him. Eve lets him finish before she tears him apart with her teeth and nails. She makes sure he's dead before she does so; Eve's a killer, a vicious one, but that truly monstrous side of her she fights every day.

She growls halfway through her meal, reveling in the taste of the man's flesh. It's unlike any blood she's ever tasted before. It's a raw, fresh taste, not the stale copper taste of blood. It's delicious, and everything she craved.

By the time Eve's through with the human there's nothing left but broken bones covered in hunks of uneaten flesh and cloth scraps. She realizes after a moment that she's eaten through clothes and has to stop the hysterical laughter from bubbling out.

Not even a moment later she freezes, rooted to the spot.

David stands before her in the open doorway.

* * *

David follows Eve down the mostly destroyed streets of Manhattan, preparing to protect her from any lycans or humans that might cross their path.

What he isn't prepared for is to watch Eve tear a man apart and devour him. Bleed him dry, yes, but eat him ─ it isn't a vampire thing to do. Blood is their nourishment. Only humans eat meat. Humans and ─

He doesn't continue the train of though. He can't think about the side of her that the other vampires of his coven judge her by. It scares him just as much as it does them, and he hates admitting to that feeling. When Eve's looking at him like she might pass out, covered in blood and guts, and despite her feeding, still bleeding he can't think about anything but helping her.

"Eve," he says.

She takes off in a dead sprint past him, growling at him loudly as she does so. It's not like her; none of this is like her.

"Eve!" he shouts and takes off after her. "Eve, stop!"

She does so, allowing him to catch up to her. When he gets within touching distance of her, she grabs her hands in his. They're colder than they should be. The action smears blood, the human's and her own, on his hands, but he doesn't mind. He's more worried about Eve at the moment than staying clean.

"Go home, David," she says, squeezing his hands in hers. "Trust me, please."

She releases his hands and takes off again down the street. She's faster than him, so much faster. There's no way he can catch up to her, but there's also no way he can just trust that she'll be safe on her own. Unless he trusts her.

He does, so he doesn't try to follow her. He sighs. He wishes there were something he could kill to release the awful feelings he has inside him, but he knows better than to go looking for a fight on his own.

It's just, the worry and the anger ─ the anger at her for leaving him alone, _worrying_.

David calms himself down enough to return the way he came. Eve would return to the coven. She would. He'd just have to wait.

* * *

She runs because she can feel something changing inside her and she doesn't want David to be around to see it. There's a heat building within, like a furnace. And her mouth ─

Her mouth aches right where her fangs are located. Her arm does too. She looks down at the still bleeding appendage, and something is seriously wrong. She's fed and still she bleeds. She should be able to heal herself easily at this point, but no matter how much she wills it, the blood steadily drips down her arm, falling over her hands and to the ground.

There's no way to contact anyone knowledgeable though, so there's nothing she can do but wait it out. The people who know her biology the best, she can't go to them, not when she's sworn to kill them all. She stops by an abandoned building, breathing heavily from her flight. There's a lycan nearby, she can sense it, but why it doesn't attack her in her obviously incapacitated state is beyond Eve's grasp.

"Come and get me, or leave," she shouts into the street loud enough for more than the one lycan to hear. It's not the blood lust fueling the anger she feels overcoming her. No, it's something else entirely.

It's a rage that leaves her vision reddening around the edges, her body heating up at the thought of ripping the lycan to pieces.

She's not hungry anymore, but she wants to kill. Anything will do at this point. Human, lycan, _vampire_.

It's a good thing she left David. The last thing she wants to do is hurt him, and in the state she's in now, she won't be able stop herself from doing so even if she tries. She feels more animal than she's ever felt.

The realization is slow to dawn on her, but when it comes with the image of the full moon high in the sky, she gasps.

Leaning against the broken building and feeling the anger and blood lust rising every moment, she knows. There's something wrong that can't be changed. It's not something that their coven will be able to accept either. They will kill her when she changes into the lycan she's becoming. The bite, it must've infected her, the modified blood of the super lycan corrupting her own.

She will kill them all when she changes. The fact that she's now staring down a lycan, imagining what it'll be like to feel it's blood on her hands, is proof enough.

It growls at her, and she takes a step away from the building she's leaning against, not backing off. The lycan twitches it's head to the side at the sound of a building crumbling away in the distance, and Eve uses it's distraction as an opening to attack. She jumps forward over the yards of ground separating them.

She has no weapons on her so she's going to have to use her bare hands. Her injured hand quivers at the thought, but not enough to make her turn around and go.

"This was a mistake," she tells the lycan even though she knows it doesn't notice. _I'll be like you soon,_ she thinks, but for now he's still the enemy.

She punches into its gut, tearing through hard skin and bone. Her fist goes right through it, and the fight is over before it's even started.

When she pulls her hand out, her fingers have changed into razor sharp claws. Her skin is even whiter than it was before, and the colour is travelling upwards. She forces back the transformation with a will she didn't know she possessed. The urge to howl out her kill is harder to fight, but she does.

She looks to the sky to see the moon, half-full and resting among the clouds.

By the time the full moon comes, she won't be able to resist the shift. She has three days still on the same side. Three days with David until they'll try to kill her.

She can live with that. She only wonders what David or her parents will think of that. Her parents are too far away to change how the coven will react, but David ─

He's protected her since the day he met her. Will he protect her from this?

Oddly enough, Eve hopes not. Lycans are the enemy. Even her mother didn't betray her coven for them. Michael was still a human when she fell in love with him. Would she have risked everything if he had been a lycan, had stayed a lycan?

David loves her, but does he love her enough to risk what Selene risked?

Eve has so many questions and so little time to find the answers.

She scratches at her hand. It's finally starting to heal though the blue tint still remains, a marker to the reaction happening within her.

It's time for her to return home. If she only has three days, she's going to make the most of them.

* * *

David walks into the coven's headquarters with the hope that Eve had decided to return and with her speed, had returned there before them.

"Did she go by you?" she asks the guards on duty.

"She?" The guards look between each other with confusion.

"Eve," David clarifies. "Did she come by here?"

"Oh, it left earlier and still hasn't returned."

David notices the "it" but he doesn't say anything until the guard says, "The sun's coming up," like David should be worried.

"Eve can take the sun. She," he pauses to make his meaning clear, "is immune to it."

"I see," says the other guard. He looks at the other guard significantly, and David knows he's gotten his point across.

As he walks past the guards, his thoughts return to Eve. What could she be feeling to go off on her own like that? She doesn't leave him often because he worries about her when she does, but twice in one day ─ it's not like her.

She was so animalistic in her feeding, perhaps his surprise at seeing that had made her want to run away. David hopes not. He doesn't care about that; he just wants to be certain that she's healthy and safe.

When he enters the main hall, he's about to go to sleep but he's caught around the arm by Nemira, a younger vampire. She smiles at him brightly and says, "We're celebrating!"

He unlinks his arm from hers. It's an intimate gesture, and one he's not comfortable at all with coming from her.

"Care to join the festivities?" she says, unhurt by his action.

"What festivities?" he asks right before he hears it, the sound of a dozen hearts beating fast in their chest of a dozen humans. He's not hungry but the sound gets to him nonetheless.

The _festivities_ don't interest him at all though. He's not a vampire happy to sit down and feed on a pet human. He'd rather, like Eve, hunt for his kill. It spoke to the darker side of him, his own animalistic side.

"The feeding," she replies. Nemira inclines her head towards the dark hall leading to their human

"I'd rather not," he replies and leaves her to her meal.

* * *

**Day 03;**

When Eve returns, the sun is rising in the sky. Only the guards are awake. They stand just inside the upper level of building, staring into the rising with blank expressions. They don't say anything to Eve when she enters, and not for the first time, she's grateful for that. She doesn't think she can speak without revealing her innermost thoughts. She's used to keeping secrets. When all she can see in her mind is images of her clawed hands on their throats however ─ she's not certain she'll be able to keep that to herself.

They do look at her with undisguised suspicion though. Eve's unsurprised by that. She's covered in nothing but blood and body fluids.

She returns to her room and the first thing she does is change her blood soaked sheets. She doesn't want to smell her own blood when she sleeps. After that she takes a shower that helps to calm her mind.

The ease with which she accepts her change isn't odd to Eve. Ever since the day she learned the lycans were using her to make themselves stronger, she's suspected this change would come. The only way her blood could work was if their biology had the same makeup, and despite her parentage, she always knew she was more lycan than vampire.

When she gets out the shower, she thinks about going to see David. She needs her sleep though and so does he. She can talk to him in the evening. She has time for that at least.

She climbs into her bed and relaxes under the clean sheets, nodding off to sleep.

It's a restless sleep. All she dreams about is David's face, swimming in a pool of blood.

She awakens with a start, unable to catch her breath.

* * *

The lycans attack in a force of five.

David whips around when he hears the first howl. He stops his exit from the room, and is soon joined by Nemira and four other vampires. They listen to the sound of the guards dying upstairs.

_They must've smelled the blood_.

It's the most logical explanation. The only people who've been out in the past two days are David and Eve, and he wasn't followed. He's more than certain neither was Eve. She wouldn't put their coven in danger like that, although David's not certain the rest of his coven would do the same.

His whip is secure in his bedroom, so David grabs the pistol holstered on his hip and aims a shot at the first lycan he sees. It hits, but it doesn't slow the lycan down much as it travels down the stairs and throws Nemira to the side with a heavy blow. His bullets aren't silver. Even after all this time and the steps they've made, they still aren't as well supplied weapons wise as they should be. They're trained to fight, to do more than survive now though and that's more than enough.

Nemira gets up, hissing at the lycan, and pulls a gun off of the belt of her dress. Together, David and Nemira riddle the lycan with enough bullets that when David finally reaches it and drives one of Eve's silver blades through its throat, it stays down.

He sees a lycan disappear down the hall leading to Eve's room. Before he can do anything about it though, another lycan, a larger one than the one he's just killed, blocks his path. The lycan roars. It jumps forward, aiming to take David down, but he jumps to the side and avoids its clumsy attack. He swings his knife as it passes, slicing a thin line through its skin. It's not deep enough to kill.

David growls low in his throat. The beast replies with another roar that reverberates off the building's foundation. It jumps at him again. David dives beneath it. As it sails overhead, he thrusts his knife upwards and slices through muscle and bone. The lycan doesn't get up again.

The battle's already won he realizes when he stands up and takes a look around the destroyed room. One vampire lies dead, his body torn beyond repair. On the floor lie three dead lycan corpses to be disposed of as well.

Their loss is great. They've lost a life and their safety. David starts to consider how he'll deal with that when Eve appears before him covered in blood.

_Are you hurt_, he's about to ask her, but she picks him up with one hand, throwing him against the wall and knocking the words out of his mouth. Something in her hands cuts his chest. He's not worried about his small wound however. When he regains his footing, all he can worry about is Eve.

Underneath all the blood, she's paler than usual. Her skin has a white coloured glow to it. It's her hands that truly give him pause. Her fingers are long, white, and clawed like the lycans they've just killed.

"Eve," he says, his tone etched with worry.

She growls at him a feral sound.

"Your hands," he says. He doesn't mean to say it aloud and bring attention to it, but he's unable to stop the surprised words from leaving his mouth.

She's changing, and David doesn't know what to do. It's noticeable now; everyone can see, and they're watching Eve with undisguised disgust and malice in their eyes.

Eve's own gaze mirrors theirs. Eve pauses in her exit, and turns to look at him.

"If you follow me, I will kill you," she growls out before disappearing up the stairs with a speed that's blinding.

"They know where we are now," Alexander says after she leaves, coming out from the darkness of the corner he's standing in. "They know that we are weak here. They will come back in force."

David shakes himself out of his momentary stupor and collects his wits. He needs to be a leader now more than ever. He needs to be the calming figure in this sea of chaos; he can't let his feelings affect him now.

"And we'll be ready for them when they do," David says loud enough for all present to hear. They nod their assent though the hatred is still clear in their expressions. They begin to talk about plans of protection, about preparation. _Good_, David thinks. They'll need a strong front for what's to come.

He turns to Alexander, grabbing him by the arm.

"We need to plan our defense," David says, "Will you help me?"

"Of course," Alexander replies, but all David hears is Eve's angry voice.

_I will kill you_, she says in his mind, and a rage starts to simmer within him.

_Not if I kill you first._

* * *

Eve crawls out of bed slowly. Her body aches. Her arm, however, is fully healed with no remnants of large bite mark their once was except for a jagged light-coloured scar across her skin.

She's about to go find David to say..._something_ to him when she senses it.

_Lycans_.

They attack in a small number, but it's an attack nonetheless.

When Eve hears the sound of fighting, she rushes out of her room and down the hall. She sensed them and now they were here, and it felt like they were coming home.

She isn't sure why she feels that way, but all she knows is that she has to protect her coven. As much as she's sure they wouldn't go out of their way to protect her, she cares about them because David does. If she let them die, he'd never be able to live with himself, and thus neither would she, even though she's certain she won't be living much longer.

She attacks the first lycan she sees as it's trying to slink its way down the hall. It probably smells the humans as strongly as Eve does, and it's hunger is driving it towards the scent.

She throws it against the wall with a strength she didn't have before. When it tries to stand, she punches it in the gut, tearing through the flesh with a transformed hand ─ a hand transformed willfully. She moves closer to it and tears its throat with her teeth. The blood soaks her face, flowing freely from the wounded lycan. It moans softly, a pained sound that only serves to fuel Eve's blood lust.

_I have to protect my pack, _she thinks. The thought comes unbidden to her mind.

There's a crash to the left of her in the dark hallway, and she looks down to see a lycan tearing into a female vampire. For one split second, she isn't sure of who she should help, the vampire or the lycan, and that terrifies her.

She jumps off the dying lycan and sprints down the hall to attack the one eating through the vampire. It dies easily beneath her strong hands, bones breaking and muscles tearing at Eve's command.

Eve moves to the main room. She sees David. The blood lust in her makes her unable to stop herself from reaching out, grabbing him, and throwing him across the destroyed room.

She gasps inwardly at her action. David stands, looking at her with surprise.

"Eve," he says.

_I don't know what I'm doing_, she wants to say. All that comes out is a growl.

She doesn't need to look to know that everyone in the room is watching her now. All she has eyes for is David.

"Your hands," David half murmurs, but the room is so silent everyone can hear.

Eve looks down at the still clawed appendage. She doesn't bother to shift it back to normal. She looks around the room and through the blood lust all she sees is more victims, David included.

She makes for the stairs, but she hears David's footsteps behind her, following. She can't ─ she just can't, so she turns to him and says, "If you follow me, I will kill you,"

David gives her a look that Eve recognizes. He's looking at her like she's the enemy. Eve turns and races up the stairs, past the dead guards, and out the door.

She can't blame him for the look in his eyes when she's just looked at him in the same way.

She doesn't mean it though, not much. Her rage is so undirected, so strong that it burns through her like a fever. She can't focus.

She screams into the night, and it's a bloodcurdling sound that makes her skin crawl.

She keeps running. She's not sure where she's going, but she knows she can't be near anyone right now. She wants to kill, kill, kill. She's hungry, but not for food. All she wants to see is torn skin and bleeding carcasses.

_Is this what it always feels like?_ _ A constant insatiable blood lust? A lack of control?_

There can't be all there is. Eve has to believe that. To become what she's killed for so long, that's something she can come to terms with. To become something so purely animal, she's not sure she can live with that.

Maybe in two days time she'll welcome death with open arms.

* * *

**Day 04;**

Eve runs for what feels like hours until the fever finally burns out of her. By the time it does, the sun is high in the sky. She falls where she is, inside a bombed out building North of their main headquarters. It's near one of their lesser bases. Eve's safe where she is, and that and her weariness make her sleep for hours.

It's night when she awakens, and it's time to find David. Her body calls to him, her mind only focused on finding him. She needs to tell him.

She needs to be near him, but most of all she needs to _tell_ him. She only has today left before the change is permanent; she needs to make the most of it.

She needs to be by his side.

* * *

After going over the defenses with Alexander, David goes to his room and doesn't leave it again. He should probably feed, but he remains sitting on the edge of his bed. He has no more patience for the looks his coven gives him, all at once piteous and full of contempt. As if he should feel shame for still wanting to believe in Eve.

Perhaps he should.

He really isn't sure what to feel anymore. Everything's becoming so complicated. He'd thought it was before when all he had to worry about was being in love and helping to win this war, now...

There's a knock on his door, and then Eve enters. David stares at her, surprised. He truly didn't expect to see her again so soon, let alone have her come searching him out.

"There's something I want to say," she says. She approaches the bed he's sitting on with trepidation in her steps. It surprises David, her nervousness. He should be the one who's nervous in this situation. She _did_ threaten to kill him, and he knew she'd meant her threat.

The thought brings his anger back. He'd meant it when he thought that he'd kill her at the time too. It's a product of his hurt, his anger and his urge to hurt her too, but he can't help the feeling.

He snaps at her, "Haven't you already said enough?"

David looks at her face, truly looks at her and then he sees it ─ she's afraid. The realization immediately cools his anger. He stands and closes the distance between them. With both hands, he cups Eve's face, forcing her to look at him. It's an intimate gesture, and he risks revealing himself. Eve's been so different though, _is_ so different that it's a risk he's willing to take.

"Tell me," he says softly.

"I need you," she replies calmly despite the desperation in her gaze. The words hit him hard. If his heart could beat, it'd be racing in his chest. As it is, he can hear the quickened pace of her heart.

Eve's words and her reaction make David willing to risk bringing her face to his own. He kisses her softly at first, and then he deepens it when she doesn't immediately push him away. The kiss is unexpectedly warm, her hot lips heating his cold ones. She kisses him back slowly and with a nervousness David finds endearing. After a long moment, she pulls away from him. She's breathing in short pants.

He must've done something wrong, took too much; she's looking at him with a predator's eye, the same look she gave him earlier when she tossed him across the room.

"Eve," he starts.

"Kiss me," she cuts him off, and David can't do anything but comply.

* * *

She doesn't mean for the words to come out of her mouth. When she tells him, "I need you," what she means to say is, "I'm no longer myself."

When she says, "Kiss me," what she means to say is, "I'm turning into the thing that we kill."

And when they're lying in his bed afterwards and she stares into his blue eyes and tells him, "I love you," what she really means is, "Goodbye."

She leaves him asleep in his bed and heads to her room. She doesn't know what she'll be like when she awakens, if she'll have the same madness that possessed her yesterday or the heat that turned all her explanations into forgotten thoughts.

She falls asleep quickly, and for the first time in the past couple of days she doesn't dream.

* * *

**Day 05;**

-DIVIDERDIVIDERDIVIDER-

She awakens wrapped in torn sheets and a sheen of sweat. There's a fever in her blood she can't control, and it's nothing like the heat she felt before. Her body is burning from the inside out, her organs shifting and churning inside her. She can taste acid on her tongue, a bitterness that makes her swallow hard.

It isn't hard to figure what this is. The full moon rises this evening, and Eve's body is preparing for it. She's scared, but not for herself. David pops into her mind unbidden, and Eve wishes she had more time.

Wishes won't stop the transformation however so she crawls off the torn bedspread and dresses quickly. She's going to make a clean exit before everyone awakens. She's certain enough of the situation to know that meeting anyone in her current state is dangerous to both her and them. She doesn't want to have to kill, not yet.

She exits her room with a quietness perfected over time. She's just as silent as she moves down the halls. The only other person awake is Alexander, and she finds him standing guard in the main room. She nods at him; it's not an easy action to make in her state. Even untouched by the transformation, it would be difficult. Alexander despises her, and it's clear in his every look. He doesn't say anything in response to her nod, nor does he acknowledge it. All he does is stare at her with suspicious eyes until she looks away and makes her way up the stairs.

When she's finally outside, she realizes it's closer to night than she thought. The sun is close to setting, the sky turning pink and orange in preparation. She stares off down the streets, unsure of where to go from here. She needs to be far away, but far away where is the question. She goes south again. There are too many vampire bases up North, and the south, where the lycans are, that's where she'll belong soon anyway.

Her insides continue to churn as she races through the empty streets. She can smell the lycans now, not just sense them in her gut. She can also smell the very heat of the air, the dust on the ground. Earthy, burnt smells. As a vampire her sense of smell had been weak, but now as the lycan she's becoming, she can smell everything, and the new sense is overwhelming.

She ends up in front of an old church mostly untouched by the human's bombs. On the roof, she waits for the change to come. The air is cooler and smells fresher at the top. She breathes it in and the scent relaxes her somewhat.

It's enough that when David arrives minutes after sun's set, the words come easy.

"You're going to have to kill me," she says, and she means it.

* * *

He looks at the torn sheets and he knows. He supposes he's known for a while, but he didn't want to face it. David still doesn't want to face it but he has to. There's no denying it anymore.

She's turning into a lycan. By the time the full moon comes, they'll be on two different sides, and there's no way for him to stop it.

David knows what this feeling is. He's seen heartbreak before on the faces of many vampires who lost his people to the lycans and the humans ─ and he's certain this is it. His heart is breaking, and he's not sure that he'll be able to repair it.

He needs to find Eve. The moon is full tonight, and night is coming fast.

He exits her room and heads to the main chamber where he finds Alexander talking to closed huddle of vampires. When he enters, they quiet, and David gives them a curious look before approaching them.

"What's going on?" he asks.

One vampire, Leo, looks at Alexander's stoic face and replies, "We were planning for the battle."

There's something being left unsaid, and David's not stupid; it's clear to him what it is.

"And this has something to do with Eve?"

"She never healed our dead. She's attacked her own kind, attacked _you_. We can't trust her."

"Do you trust me?" he asks them all but his gaze is directed at Alexander.

There's a pause, short but impossible not to notice.

"Of course," they say.

"Then trust me on this. Eve is on _our_ side. Always has been. Why should you doubt her now when I do not?"

"You're right," Leo says, "We should go check that the guns are properly prepped. It's the night of the full moon. They'll probably attack now when they're strongest."

They all disperse save for Alexander who continues to look at David with the same stoic expression on his face.

"You love her. Your thoughts are clouded by that. It's weakness, David," Alexander says, his voice low.

"It's not," David says. He doesn't bother to deny the truth of his love for Eve. His thoughts go to her as he continues, "And I need to find her. Did you see her leave?"

"Earlier," Alexander says, leaning back on his heels. "She looked about ready to kill something. I just hope it was a lycan."

David nods, but it's not in agreement. He moves past Alexander and says, "I'll be back soon."

"Wait," Alexander says, but David's already running up the stairs. He bypasses the guards on the top level, giving them a cursory glance as he does. They're more than well-armed now having collected weaponry from the other bases, but David's not sure that's going to be enough.

He has this sick feeling that tonight's going to be a loss for them.

David travels through the darkened, rubble and corpse covered streets of former Manhattan, following Eve's scent. It leads to the remains of an old church, and he climbs the stairs with trepidation to what he might find.

If she's changed already...

He's not sure what he'll do. What he wants to do ─ he loves his people, more than anything in the world, but Eve...he might just love her more. What difference is it from Selene abandoning her coven for Michael if he took off with her and ran?

_She's full lycan. That's the difference._

When he gets to the top, he finds her standing at the edge of the rooftop, staring over the parapets into the darkness of the night sky. The change hasn't happened yet thankfully.

David can't see her expression, but her posture is still. She's waiting, and whether it's for him or the change he can't tell.

He stares at Eve for a long time, longer than he can count. By the time she speaks, he's not even sure what speaking is anymore. Her words don't fully connect at first, and then finally they process in his mind.

"You're going to have to kill me," she says. "Either today or tomorrow or the next, but you're going to have to kill me. You or Selene or Michael or someone else. I've turned into what we kill and what we will continue to kill. I'm no exception."

"No," David denies.

Eve turns to look at him. Her expression is blank and there's a dead look in her eyes. It's a look of resignation, and David can't take looking at it so he looks away. There's a broken parapet on the east side of the rooftop, jagged and dangerous looking. He focuses on that instead of the rising moon.

"Eve," he says without looking at her.

"I love you," she says, preempting him. Each word comes out strangled as she continues, "Now kill me."

David can't do it. He knows it in his heart. He wants to risk everything for her, the way he's done since the day he met her. He'll risk _everything_ for her.

"I won't," he says, "Not ever."

He finally turns back to look at her. Her face is a mask of pain, and there's the moon high in the sky. Eve screams, and he wants to run over to her but her bones are breaking under her skin, shifting. Her body starts to cover itself in hard skin, and in a moment, she's something else.

A lycan, but unlike one he's ever seen. She's beautiful, skin white all over the milk of the moon. It catches the light in the sky, glowing. She's smaller than the other lycans too, and her form is more human, with a smaller snout and a more human shaped head. Her eyes are red, and they stare into him.

Looking at her, David knows that he won't let her die, not by his hand or another's. She's so much more than they lycans they fight. She's still Eve.

Before he can tell her, grab her, _do anything_ though she makes a running jump off the rooftop. She howls loudly as she disappears into the streets. He wants to follow her but he hears another howl and another. The attack on his coven is commencing. At the moment, he can't worry about Eve.

He runs down the stairs and exits into the streets. He uses all of his strength to speed back to his coven.

"Where have you been?" Alexander snarls at him when he enters the main room.

"There's no time to argue now," David says. "Are we ready?"

"Yes," Alexander says, tone clipped. "The humans are secure."

"That's good because they're coming."

There's another howl in the room above them and series of growls and yips followed by a pounding that leaves the ground shaking. It's followed by a series of gunshots and a cry of "Lycans" that brings back the memory of the first time his coven was attacked by lycans. It's not a good memory ─ he did die ─ save for Selene saving him.

It's not a memory he can afford to relive now. He runs across the room, and grabs an automatic off the wall. His whip is already wrapped around his waist as it always is, and he holsters a pistol with silver bullets next to it.

There's another howl and then the lycans are pouring down the stairs. David focuses on attacking them before they can make it to the bottom and into the main chamber.

There's too many of them though and the rapid fire of his bullets is doing nothing to slow them down. Luckily, or unluckily for David and his people, instead of travelling down towards the hall leading to the humans, they spend their time attacking the vampires in the main hall.

David's automatic empties quickly, and he takes out his pistol, aiming for the heads of the lycans. He takes down one, two, three, before he runs out of bullets in that too. That's when he pulls out his whip and begins slicing threw them.

He's at the center of the fray, and he watches as his people are mauled by the lycans. He keeps attacking, cutting a super lycan with his whip deep enough that it turns its focus from the vampire it's attacking and comes at him.

David turns and sprints in the opposite direction. He slides his whip back into his belt. When he hits the wall of the chamber, he runs up it so that he's able to jump onto the lycan's back and attack from there. He forces his knife through the lycan's head and drags it downward, tearing the tissue and bone. His wrist nearly breaks from the action, but it does its job.

The lycan falls to the floor, and David rolls off of it just in time to get hit from the side by one of the lycans. He slides across the hard concrete. His shirt tears to shreds on his back and he loses his whip in the process. The lycan jumps on top of him, and it's all David can do to keep it from biting and clawing through his skin. He grapples with it, pushing his head as far back against the floor as it will go. The lycan's biting jaws keep moving closer though, so David risks getting cut through with its claws in order to grab the knife from his belt and jam it through the smaller lycan's chest.

The lycan slices through the soft skin of David's abdomen hard enough to have him coughing of blood, but David's won the fight. He'd aimed at the lycan's heart, and he'd reached it.

He pushes the dying lycan off of him slowly. The sounds of battle around him echo in his ears, but there's also a ringing behind it from the force of his head hitting the floor when the lycan threw him. There's blood dripping down his face and he takes a quick moment to wipe it away before diving for his fallen whip.

The gunfire around him is starting to die out. His people are falling around him, the massive amount of lycans overcoming them with their numbers.

_No,_ he thinks. Soon, David's grappling with another lycan and then there are two upon him. He can't resist them both, and he's pushed beneath the broken stone table where they made their plans, pieces of it falling on him as it attacks him.

The lycan raises an arm, smacking him across the head. His vision goes blank for a moment. When he's able to see again, he's staring into yellow eyes of the lycan. It's gaze speaks of only one thing: David's death.

* * *

When Eve runs away from David, she's followed, but it isn't by him.

She smells the lycans before she sees them. They have a hot, living smell to them unlike the dead one that surrounds the vampires. She's not sure yet whether the scent is better or worse, but it's not _bad._ It's more like it's familiar, like...

_coming home_.

She understands now why she felt that way when the lycans attacked. She's a part of them, and they're a part of her in a way the vampires never were. She could never feel them like she feels the lycans right now. She can feel their every breath in her own heartbeat as if they're beating in unison.

She stops mid-run and waits. It's only a few lycans that approach her. The rest ─ she knows where they've gone. To the coven. _To David._

As much as she feels one with her new lycan brethren, a stronger part of her, the part that loves twinges at the thought of him dying.

She barks at the lycans ─ _don't follow me_, and they don't. She has power of them, she can feel it in her blood just as she can feel them in hers. They're one now. She's never felt anything close to this before.

_Is this what being a lycan is like? Or is this just me?_

Eve isn't sure how to answer that. The only ones who know the answers ─ she can't ask them right now.

She continues to race down the street, this time in the direction of the coven. She can smell the blood, the death even this far away from the battle. The smell gets stronger as she approaches, underneath it the living wet smell of the lycans.

Close to so many of them, Eve can sense the blood lust in each and every one of them. The only thing that stops her from joining in on their kill is thinking of David. He calms her mind, keeps the undirected rage from overcoming her.

She rushes past the dead lycans and vampires on the first floor and goes down the stairs. In front of her is a feast of chaos, and it's clear that the lycans are the ones in control.

_Good_ comes to her mind unbidden. She's never thought of herself as one for seeking vengeance, but that was before when she was on their side.

Now, the only side she's on is her own.

Her eyes catch sight of David beneath a lycan. The lycan's raising its paw to attack him and she howls ─ _stop, leave ─ _the sound reverberating off her insides as it rushes through the lycans around her. She can sense their acquiescence to her command, and they step away from the vampires, all of them. They start coming towards her.

They're leaving.

She stops her pace on the stairs, allowing them to move by her. There's so many of them, and she relaxes into their scent only for a moment when David jumps up and picks up his whip off the floor. She barks at him, realizing a moment later that he might not understand her command. Other vampires are moving now, and she won't be able to stop the lycans if they continue their attack. She doesn't really care to, the vampires fate mean nothing to her now.

David understands her, though, and raise a hand that has the vampires stopping as well. The parallel between Eve's power and David's is palpable in that moment. She looks at him as an equal, though she doesn't understand the look in his eyes.

"That thing, what is it?" a vampire, _Alexander_, says. She bristles at the way he points at her, and the feeling must reflect in the lycans around her because they turn to stare at him. She can feel the blood lust rising, and she's not sure whether its hers or their own. She tries to push it back, barking at the lycans again to continue their departure. They're movements are slower, though.

David says, "That _thing_ is Eve, and she's saving our lives," and Eve feels a love for him so strong that she doesn't understand why he doesn't feel it as well.

"I knew the abomination would try to kill us one day, just like your father knew. It's only you that couldn't see. You still can't see," Alexander snarls, removing the gun from his waist.

Eve wouldn't bother to stop the lycans at this point even if she could. They're protecting her. Still she's she doesn't quite understand why she has this power over them, but she's glad for it because she's not sure she would survive being shot with silver bullets. The lycans made from her blood are immune, but is she?

That's something she'll have to figure out later. For now, she watches as the lycans tear Alexander's struggling form to pieces. David tries to save him, and Eve doesn't expect him to do any different.

"Alexander," a vampire says.

"He's dead," David says, and then he's turning to her.

"Eve," he says, "Eve, stay with me."

She can't stay with him. Not here. Not with what she is now, with who she's becoming. She turns and leaves the way she came, hoping that he'll follow.

* * *

He's about to die.

The lycan raises another arm, aiming his clawed fingers at David's throat. There's no way David can avoid it. He's about to die, and he wishes Eve was here so he could at least see her face again even if it means facing his final death. He waits for the lycan to kill him.

Suddenly, there's a howl loud enough to shake the very foundations of the building. The lycan moves away from David, clearing his view and there Eve stands at the top of the rubble covered stairs. She paces back and forth along them. She's watching the lycans and they in turn are watching her. Not one moves in for their kills. They step away from dead and dying vampires and start to approach Eve. David jumps up, ignoring the pain in his torn body. He has to protect Eve. She came back to him, and he has to protect her.

He growls at the lycans and picks up his fallen whip from the floor.

Eve barks and as he raises his whip to attack the nearest lycan he realizes she's barking at him. David looks into her eyes. They're so red now, but not different. Still he can understand the meaning of her gaze, and he lowers his whip. He raises his hand at the other vampires poised to attack, beckoning them to do the same. They accede but grudgingly. He doesn't know what Eve is doing, but even the way she is, he trusts her enough to acquiesce to the command in her eyes.

Eve barks again, this time at the lycans. One by one, they exit past her, edging by her small white form. Although larger, they kneel their heads as they past her in obvious deference.

Suddenly David understands. She's their alpha and she's commanding them to leave.

How he knows this? The look in Eve's eyes is all it takes for him. What the revelation means to him?

That's a question he's not sure he can answer.

What she is now, the leader of the lycans, it's a hard thing to accept.

"That thing, what is it?" Alexander demands, stepping forward.

His movements cause the lycans to turn. Eve barks at them, and they continue to move out the door, but slower this time.

David doesn't feel like lying would be helpful in this situation, so he says, "That _thing_ is Eve, and she's saving our lives."

"I knew the abomination would try to kill us one day, just like your father knew. It's only you that couldn't see. You still can't see," Alexander snarls, removing the gun from his waist. David is too far away to stop him as he moves to shoot at Eve, but the lycans aren't.

They attack him viciously. Alexander gets off a few shots, but even with that and David reaching his side quickly, when David pulls a lycan off of him and throws it across the room, it isn't enough to save him. His body is bloody mess, torn to pieces and unable to be saved. David isn't quite sure he would want to.

He turns to Eve, but she's just watching the attack with unblinking eyes. It's as if she's accepting it, and it makes sense; she's a part of their pack now. They're protecting her as David would protect her, and she's accepting it as she would if David or her parents did it.

It's nothing if not typical of Eve, and David is surprised by how relieved he is by that. Ordering the lycans like she has ─ when she jumped off that roof, he can admit now that he'd thought she wouldn't ever return, and that for a moment, he wished she wouldn't.

It would make things so much easier than what he's going to do now.

"Alexander," someone cries out, but no one else moves. The terror in the room is palpable. He'd never thought he'd see his coven so afraid.

"He's dead," David says.

"Eve," he continues, turning to the white lycan. She doesn't make a sound as he continues, "Eve, stay with me."

She doesn't make a sound as she turns and walks up the stairs, leading the lycans that killed Alexander behind her. They growl at him, but otherwise they don't make any other threatening gestures.

When he's certain they've gone, he turns to his people. They stare at him with undisguised disgust in their gazes.

"What are you doing? We should have killed her when we had the chance. You should've killed her," Nemira says, stepping towards him.

"I can't," he says, "She saved us can't you see?"

There's no reasoning with them. It can't hurt for trying though. His coven could never accept this change in Eve; they'd never even accepted her to begin with. It's odd, but David feels like he's always known it would come to this, having to choose between his coven and Eve. He made his decision a long time ago, although it's taken him until now to realize it.

"She's a lycan," Nemira says with hatred, and there's a murmur of agreement.

David looks around at the fallen. Anora, Henry, Erik, Victoria, all dead, and by the hands of the lycans, and yet the care he feels for them is so distant as to be unreachable.

"She isn't welcome here," they say, and David stares at them unseeing. Their faces are becoming a blur to him, an almost forgotten memory.

"Then neither am I," David replies and follows Eve into the night.


End file.
